


Fourteen Dragons, Fourteen Airmen

by moonix



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 21:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3265502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonix/pseuds/moonix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How the dragons of Volstov picked their riders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fourteen Dragons, Fourteen Airmen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luvanderwon (missbysshe)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=luvanderwon+%28missbysshe%29).



> This was inspired by a comment from JaiDani somewhere on Tumblr about how one of the airmen probably met his dragon while on the run from the Provost's wolves. I ran with it and had some ideas about all of them. :) Mainly this is about those bamf dragon ladies!
> 
> No trigger warnings as far as I'm aware. Rating is for crude airman (/dragon) language.

001\. Proudmouth & Adamo 

She gets to pick from the generals, the war heroes, the most highly decorated soldiers; Volstovic warfare elite, and she wants not a single one of them.

Adamo is in charge of training the first wave of recruits for when the other dragons are finished. He's the one who suggests introducing her to the recruits, claiming there's no use wasting time and effort on boys who'll just piss their pants the first time they see a real dragon up close, which amuses Proudmouth, so she lets them parade around in front of her with steely determination and green-tinged faces and entertains herself by occasionally flicking her tail at one of them.

Adamo doesn't bat an eye, but Proudmouth can see the tightly coiled ringlets of unspent laughter in the corners of his mouth. When he barks at the recruits to get a grip for bastion's sake, they look almost as scared of him as they are of her, and Proudmouth waits all ladylike till they're gone before she offers Adamo a ride.

“Thought you'd never ask,” Adamo growls, and saddles her up.

 

002\. Compassus & Ghislain

Compassus is quick to decide on her man. She spots him right away as the first line-up of recruits files into the pens, and not just because he sticks out in the crowd just as much as she does. All the men they've hand-picked for Compassus have a certain amount of bulk, for the sole reason that they can't have anyone breaking their matchstick legs trying to straddle her massive back. They're all tough and weather-worn, seamen mostly, and she appreciates that; she's seen the ocean from afar, and she enjoys the sharp smell of salt and brine in her nose. In any case, she needs a steady hand, not someone to get seasick easily.

Ghislain, too, fulfils all of these requirements. What's different about him is that he looks her right in the eye as he ducks into the room through the too-small door and smiles, like he already knows that he's all hers now.

“That one,” Compassus says lazily and shakes out her wings like sails billowing in the wind. “Send the rest home.”

Her only condition is that he take her to the sea as soon as they're allowed off the premises. Ghislain gives her a cheeky, two-fingered salute, and a few weeks later, they're ploughing the waves together, moonlight glinting off Compassus' wet scales like shoals of fish flitting through dark water, because Ghislain is a man of his word.

 

003\. Anastasia & Amery

They say Anastasia must have smelled Balfour on Amery when she picked him. If she's in a good mood, Anastasia likes to reply to that by growling “what, can't a girl have two sweethearts?” and preening a bit. You don't want to ask her when she's in a bad mood.

To answer the question, Anastasia does smell Balfour on Amery, but a dragon's sense of smell is acute enough to pick out even the most indistinct nuances of fear in a crowded room, so to claim that she could somehow be _hoodwinked_ so easily would, frankly, insult her and her makers. Anastasia smells a lot of things on Amery the day that he comes in for what Anastasia likes to think of as an assessment before the gods. Or goddesses, more like. She, Chastity and Natalia pick on the same day, but only Anastasia finds her match.

Amery smells like pine trees and wood smoke, beeswax and fresh air; like home and flying and many things besides that Anastasia cannot attach a label to, but most importantly, he smells like _adventure_.

The fact that he greets her with “it's an honour to meet you, milady” sure doesn't hurt, either.

 

004\. Chastity & Magoughin

Chastity likes to think of herself as easy-going compared to the fussier dragons like Cassiopeia and Havemercy, both of whom are still in the workshops, but still she goes through a whole week's worth of recruits before she finds herself a rider that matches her well enough in that respect.

Like Proudmouth and Anastasia, she's consented to take a few potential candidates out for a spin then and again, but after the second guy pukes all over her neck, even smooth-tempered Chastity gets a little tetchy. At the end of the week, she's polished up twice as good as usual, but still in a foul mood, blowing smoke rings into Adamo's face when he stops by her pen with a new batch of hopefuls. He looks almost sorry whenever he has to disturb her now.

“I like you, Chief,” Chastity grumbles on one such night as the rain clicks blunt claws against the walls of her bay. “Why can't I have you and be done with it? We'd make a good team.”

“Well, for one thing, I'm already taken,” Adamo says gruffly and crosses his arms. “I reckon Proudmouth won't take kindly to anyone stealing away her man.”

“I could take her,” Chastity purrs, dismissive. She and Proudmouth are almost the same size, after all.

“I'm flattered,” Adamo grins, patting her snout. “Will you see the boys now?”

Chastity sighs smoke and raises herself to full height.

“Any good ones?” she asks, and Adamo's eyes twinkle like sunlight on scales as he goes to fetch the recruits, which is how she knows that there are, this time. She hopes they'll be good enough.

Next door, Ghislain is singing pirate shanties in Compassus' bay while he cleans her up after a practice flight. On Chastity's other side, Natalia is humming herself to sleep. She, like Chastity herself, is still without a rider, even though she's the sweetest and most docile of them all. Chastity is looking forward to the promised arrival of their other sisters some time soon, because Natalia is lonely and pining, and the rest are out flying all day. If she and Natalia don't find a rider until then, at least they won't be so alone anymore.

But then Adamo comes back with a man in tow who smells like the wind when it blows inland from the ocean on a stormy day, and Chastity perks up.

“Who're you,” she says gruffly, ignoring the other recruits, who seem relieved more than disappointed, anyway.

“The name's Magoughin, ma'am,” he says and takes a little bow. Chastity skulks closer, flaring her nostrils. She's still feeling glum, so she blows another smoke ring and asks “Can you tell a joke?”

Magoughin never stops.

 

005\. Natalia & Raphael

For some fucked-up reason that Natalia hasn't sussed out yet, all they keep sending her is brutes and bastards and bores. They say that _Natalia_ means _beauty_ , so why pick men without a scrap of sense for aesthetics to make fools of themselves before her time and time again? It makes no sense. Lately she's taken to asking them to recite some poetry for her first. Needless to say, so far none of them have managed to do so to her satisfaction, if they knew any poetry at all.

Not that Natalia herself knows a lot of poetry, but she remembers the cadence of her maker's voice as he murmured to himself in the workshop whilst Natalia flitted in and out of consciousness in those early days. He built his meter into Natalia's bones, so iambics tend to settle her soul.

On the day they bring in Raphael amid the usual string of dunderheads, Natalia is craving words like she craves flying and night time and company. Raphael is nervous, but not scared; Natalia can taste his wary self-doubt mixed with yearning in the back of her throat, sweet and cloying with a hint of bitterness like the air before it rains. He smells like foreign lands, like leather, parchment and tea leaves, and fresh like the patch of mint she once crash-landed in when her wing mechanism had blocked. It's nice and soothing, and Natalia is pleased that he holds her gaze with the soft down of curiosity instead of the sandpaper scratch of determination that she's used to from the other recruits before him.

When she asks him to recite, Raphael lights up slowly from the inside like a lantern at dusk and opens his beautiful mouth.

 

006\. Yesfir & Luvander

It's love at first sight between Yesfir and Luvander.

Unlike the other girls, Yesfir doesn't mind so much if the boys are afraid, which is a good thing, because Luvander is the most terrified of the lot, but also the bravest.

“He's shiny,” Yesfir tells Adamo, “I like shiny things.”

So Luvander brings her gifts. Knick-knacks and jewellery and glossy posters stolen from street corners, pretty shells and precious stones, and once, the delicate, minuscule skull of a bird. But mostly, his gifts are stories; fairy tales inlaid with raucous details like glittering rubies, secrets, hidden in the palm of his hand like a pearl within an oyster, and gossip like silk scarves fluttering from mouth to mouth down in the Rue.

Yesfir collects them all, and so what if the occasional tear rolls down her boy's cheeks and joins the diamond hoard? Yesfir has heard Raphael cry in Natalia's bay opposite hers, so it's not like Luvander is the only one. A decent airman needs a heart in the right place, if you ask Yesfir – 

And Luvander's pulse is so clearly and beautifully beating at his jugular on that first day.

 

007\. Thoushalt & Ace

Thoushalt is bored of the fools who presume they could handle her for even a second in the air.

She is rarely in the mood to uncoil her body from sleep these days, bored with the games the other dragons play to entertain themselves when they're not flying or being courted by boys who think they are men. One of Thoushalt's handlers is a girl and Thoushalt dislikes her least of all, but the girl only laughs when Thoushalt offers her a ride, a gunpowder bitterness whirling in her voice like snow.

“You're too picky,” Compassus tells her, and Thoushalt preens and snaps her jaws, because she knows it's true, but she doesn't see anything wrong with it. Adamo is always so upset when she bucks off an unqualified rider in mid-air, after all.

Ace arrives at the Airman not in the usual stream of (un)lucky candidates, but on his own, at night, falling through the trapdoor above Thoushalt's bay and landing noiselessly on all fours like a cat. Thoushalt can hear the thundering of footsteps and shouts up ahead. The skinny redhead before her is crouching in the dark, watching the trapdoor with sly eyes that look deceptive like a blue sky right before a storm brews.

Thoushalt has great fun crouching in the dark with him, listening for the sounds above to fade and waiting for him to notice her.

When he does, he doesn't scream, much to her disappointment. Rather, he loses his balance and lands on his ass, eyes widening, and then he laughs, once, a silent burst of disbelieving amusement.

“Fuck me,” he whispers, “out of the frying pan, into the fire, as they say. I've really stepped in it this time, haven't I?”

He doesn't seem dismayed by this; _excited_ is more like it. It's catching, somehow, and Thoushalt stretches languidly and trots over to the small human sitting on the floor of her bay who looks like a strong gust of wind could snap him in two, but who has dragon fire burning in his eyes.

“Well, ain't I a lucky sod,” he says weakly as she towers over him. “Death by metal dragon. No cooler way to go, man.”

“How about impaled on the spires of the Basquiat, though,” Thoushalt grins and sniffs him. There's the sharp, metallic tang of adrenaline all right, but it's all mixed up with the smoky smell of the city that clings to him, and the bright starlight flavour of late-night ecstasy.

“Wicked,” Ace says. “Can you take me there? It's just, the Provost's wolves are kind of prowling the building looking for me as we speak. I bet they've blocked all the exits by now. Except for the ones in here, of course.”

“Oh, baby,” Thoushalt snickers, plucking a pair of reins from the rack on the wall with her teeth. “I can take you anywhere you want to go so long as you hold on tight enough.”

They say out of all the dragons Thoushalt's the one who'd be the most alright flying on her own, but they never told her how much fun it can be to roam the skies with a madman on your back who's whooping up a storm and cursing the Provost in the most imaginative ways Thoushalt has ever heard, _and_ she used to be next to Havemercy at the workshops.

 

008\. Spiridon & Compagnon

Spiridon has never liked being told what to do.

When her first recruits come in to audition, Adamo tells her in confidence to ignore the giggling man at the back, because he signed up drunk and probably still is, and winks. Spiridon makes a show of squinting at every single man lined up before her until they're white as the ghostly horizon on a cold, damp morning, and when she reaches Compagnon's place in line, it takes about half a second for him to burst into giggles again, wheezing and clutching at his stomach, tears at the corners of his eyes.

“Oh boy, oh man,” he chuckles and wipes a sloppy sleeve over his eyes. “This is definitely the stupidest thing I've ever done.”

He actually falls to his knees laughing this time, and Spiridon snorts in surprised amusement. Compagnon stops giggling long enough to look awed.

“Did you hear that? She _laughed_ ,” he says, reverently, and Spiridon tosses her head as the other recruits shuffle nervously in their spots and stare at the ground. She _likes_ this one. His clothes are a mess and he looks like he hasn't slept for two nights in a row, but his face shines with mirth as if freshly scrubbed, and he's still on his knees in front of her, reaching out a hand to stroke her snout.

Then he leans forward to whisper: “Don't those guards just look like complete knobs in that uniform?” And loses it again with his forehead pressed lightly to hers and tears of hysteria running down his grubby cheeks.

Spiridon finds his laughter contagious, and besides, the guards really _do_ look like knobs, whatever that is. It's not her fault if the rest of room is determined to keep the sticks up their asses. Only Adamo's eyes are twinkling a bit, even if his mouth remains as stern and straight as always.

“We're going to have lots of fun together, you and I,” Spiridon tells her shiny new boy and gives him a nudge that bowls him right over. He just stays on the floor, chuckling and gasping for breath. Spiridon turns back to Adamo.

“I want one,” she says, and the sides of Adamo's mouth quirk up.

“Of course you do, sweetheart,” he mutters, and goes to herd the rest of the recruits back to the exit.

 

009\. Al Atan & Jeannot

Al Atan arrives at the Airman together with three of the fire-breathers. She's met the others before at the workshops, of course, but she likes Erdeni best of them all, because she is wicked and red-hot delightful, so she's pleased when they get put into adjacent bays. Her other neighbour is Thoushalt, who she strikes up a close friendship with as well, at least as close as you can get to capricious Thoushalt.

Al Atan has high standards for the man who shall ride her into battle. She's not surprised that the first ten auditions don't go over too well, and she tells Adamo so when he comes to her wringing his hands. Erdeni's having trouble with her left wing those first few weeks at the Airman, and Vachir and Illarion are still burning through their unfortunate test flight pilots, sometimes even literally; so Al Atan is the first to see candidates. One day, they send a group in for both Al Atan and Vachir, and Al Atan is about to share a bored eye-roll with Vach when the last straggler saunters into her field of vision.

There's no question at all. She needs to have him.

He's small and built like a bird, but for all his lightness and poise, there is strength in his gaze, patient and self-assured, like water eroding stone.

They stand facing each other for a while, sizing each other up. Slowly, he raises an eyebrow. Al Atan makes a purring sound, like the cats at the workshop, and the man is smirking, though not at her. When the handlers try to shoo him out, he winds easily out of their grasp and slinks closer to her. He smells like Miranda on a warm summer night.

“Ever been up in the air?” Al Atan asks lazily, flicking her tail.

The man's lips open up into a grin. It's only weeks later that Al Atan learns about Jeannot's fear of heights, and by then, it's too late; they're both addicted to the swooping sensation of pulling out of a dive together at the very last moment.

 

010\. Erdeni & Niall

Niall comes in with the very first lot of recruits for Erdeni and Illarion. He's wrapped in a heavy brocade cloak of ambition and defiance, the mothball smell of out-dated familial expectations washed almost completely out of the fabric, but not _quite_ yet. It's all over very quickly. Niall makes a sweeping, dramatic entrance, then the two of them do something that Erdeni has heard described as an _eye-fuck_ , and before they've even exchanged a single word, Erdeni's soul is singing with the desire to own this pretty, pompous boy with his silky gaze and his pouty lips and the sweet, burnt smell of a decent man hidden behind layers of smoke and mirrors.

“Sweetness, I'll give you the ride of your life,” Niall promises before they take him away to train him up proper for her, and takes a bow. “Between us, I'm also an excellent kisser and very good at spooning, but I guess we're not at that stage yet.”

He winks, and Erdeni laughs, loud and delighted, while Illarion looks on curiously. She's sent the other recruits away without a word and is curled up in Vachir's bay opposite Erdeni's. Illarion is small for a fire-breather, but she's got a foul temper on her, and Erdeni's seen her get wicked fierce in the space of a few seconds when riled. Vachir is almost as big as one of the crushers, a calm, rock-solid weight behind Illarion, breathing hot air on her neck to soothe her. Sometimes, Al Atan and Erdeni gossip about them with their heads atop the wall separating their bays.

“Rule number one,” Erdeni tells Niall now, leaning in close enough that he can feel the heat emanating from her throat. “It's me giving you the rides, not the other way around. And if anyone's calling anyone sweetness, that'll be me, too. Got it, lover boy?”

Niall looks star-crossed and gives her a full soldier salute.

She's made a good choice.

 

011\. Vachir & Merritt

Al Atan and Erdeni both find riders before her, which irks Vachir, because she's been working her ass off on the test flights to be deemed ready for auditions as early as possible. Illarion lags a bit behind her at least, so Vachir busies herself with pep-talking her whenever she can get away with it, and then, one day, when they're both all trussed up and polished to a gleam for a new wave of recruits, Vachir's eyes land on a tall, fidgety redhead in the middle of the first row, who stoops a bit but meets her gaze head-on like a challenge.

His clothes are threadbare, but passably tidy. Vachir can still smell the dirt on him that he's meticulously scrubbed off, and his stomach growls louder than Illarion when one of the recruits gets too close without her consent. His nails are bitten down to the flesh, his skin is alight with a firework of freckles, and he looks somehow resigned, but not yet beaten.

When Vachir stops pacing in front of him, the men standing on his sides chuckle nervously, sharing looks.

“What's your name, then,” Vachir asks, not too kindly, because if she goes easy on him now, he'll never shape up.

“M-m-merritt,” the man stammers, but he lifts his chin in defiance and lets his shoulders roll back as he says it, and the tight, angry coils of his hands are already relaxing against the seam of his trousers. Vachir can see that he's been through a lot just to stand here, even though he doesn't mention any of it to impress her, which is good.

“Oh please,” one of the men snorts further down the row. “You don't wanna take that one, trust me. He's a real nuisance.”

Merritt's ears turn red and the corners of his mouth tauten. He swallows.

Vachir feels a stab of angry red protectiveness somewhere in her chest, and all the men but Merritt take an alarmed step backwards when her nostrils ignite. Merritt just blinks in the orange glow and looks vaguely mesmerised.

“Welcome to the Dragon Corps, nuisance,” Vachir rasps, pleased.

 

012\. Illarion & Evariste

Illarion also finds her match that day.

She picks a solemn creature of a boy, with blond, wispy hair and steel in his eyes, because he's trying so hard to shield his good qualities from the vultures around him, but still helps one of the younger muck-boys to his feet when he stumbles and drops an armful of rags and jars. Illarion slinks closer to him and, having watched Vachir earlier, asks him for his name.

“I'm Evariste, ma'am,” he says, standing straight with his hands clasped demurely in front of him. The others snicker at his manners, but Illarion will buck off any rider who doesn't treat her with respect. She flicks her wings and sniffs him, smelling clean, healthy, somewhat nervous boy; layered over a reluctance to leave home, a feeling of estrangement. She can relate to that.

“Why are you here?” Illarion asks him.

“To serve my country, ma'am,” Evariste mutters, not meeting her eyes.

Illarion snorts tiny clouds of smoke and bares her teeth. The other men nearly trip over their feet trying to get away when she starts circling her boy like prey, but he holds his ground.

“Bullshit,” she snarls. “Let's try this again. Why are you here?"

Evariste swallows.

“Cos I want to make my family proud,” he mumbles, grimacing. “Bastion knows it'd be the first time.”

“So you got something to prove, that's good. Let's see how desperate you are.”

She nods toward the saddles and reins, and Evariste looks panicked for all of five seconds before hurrying to comply. Vachir comes over while the flight instructors show Evariste what to do with the equipment and the guards accompany the rest of the recruits to the exits. She, too, is waiting for her first test flight with the red-haired boy.

“He smells like a spoiled brat,” Vachir tells her around a hot, melty sneer. “You sure he can handle himself in the air?”

“You sure yours won't fidget you both into the nearest tree?” Illarion sweetly shoots back, and Vachir laughs and pokes Illarion's side with a wing tip, nearly bowling her over because Vachir is so much bigger than her. Illarion huffs and picks herself back up. It's really not fair that Vachir's showing her up in front of her new boy, though lucky for her, Evariste is far too busy with the straps on his fire-proof boots to notice.

“Race you to the Mollyedge,” Vachir calls as she makes her way back to her bay.

 

013\. Cassiopeia & Ivory

“Hey! Can't you see she doesn't like being touched with bare hands? Go put some gloves on!”

Cassiopeia is coiled up in a corner, hissing and spitting acrid sparks, pressing as much of herself against the wall of her bay as she can. She's having one of her _tantrums_ , which is what the handlers call it when they think she's not listening, but the clean-cut, unfamiliar voice snaps her out of the worst like a pair of magic fingers.

The man belonging to the voice must've come in with the latest recruits. He is pale and eerily beautiful, with almost white hair that he brushes impatiently out of his grey thundercloud eyes, and long, elegant fingers that twitch ever-so-slightly by his sides. He looks annoyed, but Cassiopeia can smell a quiet, personal outrage beneath that.

So far, Cassiopeia holds the record for taking the longest time to pick a rider, and if you ask Cassiopeia, she will keep that record until they decide to take her back to the workshops and dismantle her, or until they let Havemercy loose on the poor unfortunate souls who think they can lay a finger on her and walk away with their arms still intact.

“How the fuck should I know, seeing as how she ain't talking,” Cassiopeia's handler grunts now, a man with big, roughly hewn hands and equally big, roughly hewn words.

“Basic body language, perhaps? Do they not cover that in your training?” the recruit snaps disdainfully from where he's stepped forward out of the line of terrified-looking boys. Cassiopeia's heard the whispers about it getting harder and harder to find decent recruits. They say the dragons are too dangerous, too unpredictable, too ruthless. They're not wrong, of course. Which is precisely the reason why they don't need decent recruits. They need madmen, and Cassiopeia needs a special brand of madness to match her own.

“They're _machines_ ,” the handler replies, coughing up the words like ash from his lungs. “Not my fault they got some shoddy wiring.”

“Ignoramus,” Cassiopeia hisses, and her recruit whirls around to look at her with bright, moonlight eyes.

“So you do talk,” he says, steady and calm over the confused curses of the handler. A smile curls the edges of his mouth like smouldering parchment, and Cassiopeia shakes herself loose of her idiot handlers to have a closer look at him.

“His hands are dirty,” Cassiopeia continues. “I'd bite them off if I could stand the stench.”

“Oh, I bet,” the man says lightly. He smells like the night sky at the darkest hour. “I'd offer my knives, but they took all weapons from us upon arrival.”

His eyes narrow as he keeps smiling, and somehow, Cassiopeia knows that he's still got that one blade hidden inside his boot which they missed. She asks for his name, and he gives it; soon, though, she will nickname him Ivory, and forget his real one.

“Would you let me ride you?” Ivory asks once the handlers have withdrawn to a safe distance. It's the first time Cassiopeia's been _asked_ , so she'll make an effort not to lose him in mid-air perhaps, so long as his fingers are competent enough to work her over-sensitive mechanisms.

Cassiopeia breathes a thin cloud of green-tinged fire, blistering the air, and says: “Go put on some gloves.”

 

014\. Havemercy & Rook

Havemercy is smug when she breaks Cassiopeia's record. She doesn't care that most of the other dragons are being sent out on raids already, even though she'd like nothing better than to join them, stretch her wings and fuck some shit up across the mountains, because no fucking way is she going to let some jumped-up, pea-brained bastard ride her into battle and get them both smashed to bits in the Cobalts because he loses his nerve.

She's the youngest and last and _best_ of her species, and they're damn well going to fall over their feet to keep her happy and entertained, cos a pissed Havemercy is the last fucking thing you want to have on your hands. Cassiopeia's tantrums are harmless sulks in comparison.

When they bring her Rook by the scruff of his neck, grimy and snot-nosed and spitting mad, steaming like a pile of shit behind a whorehouse in Molly, Havemercy knows right away that she's stuck with him now. She amuses herself by feigning disinterest for a while, but it gets boring fast when Rook isn't fazed one bit, and when they finally let her take him up in the air, Havemercy laughs, loud and joyful.

The Dragon Corps is complete at last.


End file.
